Tom Kibble – författare

Mathematical physics has made enormous strides over the past few decades, with the emergence of many new disciplines and with revolutionary advances in old disciplines. One of the especially interesting features is the link between developments in mathematical physics and in pure mathematics. Many of the exciting advances in mathematics owe their origin to mathematical physics — superstring theory, for example, has led to remarkable progress in geometry — while very pure mathematics, such as number theory, has found unexpected applications.The beginning of a new millennium is an appropriate time to survey the present state of the field and look forward to likely advances in the future. In this book, leading experts give personal views on their subjects and on the wider field of mathematical physics. The topics covered range widely over the whole field, from quantum field theory to turbulence, from the classical three-body problem to non-equilibrium statistical mechanics.

This is the fifth edition of a well-established textbook. It is intended to provide a thorough coverage of the fundamental principles and techniques of classical mechanics, an old subject that is at the base of all of physics, but in which there has also in recent years been rapid development. The book is aimed at undergraduate students of physics and applied mathematics. It emphasizes the basic principles, and aims to progress rapidly to the point of being able to handle physically and mathematically interesting problems, without getting bogged down in excessive formalism. Lagrangian methods are introduced at a relatively early stage, to get students to appreciate their use in simple contexts. Later chapters use Lagrangian and Hamiltonian methods extensively, but in a way that aims to be accessible to undergraduates, while including modern developments at the appropriate level of detail. The subject has been developed considerably recently while retaining a truly central role for all students of physics and applied mathematics.This edition retains all the main features of the fourth edition, including the two chapters on geometry of dynamical systems and on order and chaos, and the new appendices on conics and on dynamical systems near a critical point. The material has been somewhat expanded, in particular to contrast continuous and discrete behaviours. A further appendix has been added on routes to chaos (period-doubling) and related discrete maps. The new edition has also been revised to give more emphasis to specific examples worked out in detail.Classical Mechanics is written for undergraduate students of physics or applied mathematics. It assumes some basic prior knowledge of the fundamental concepts and reasonable familiarity with elementary differential and integral calculus.

This collection of books provides thorough yet accessible coverage of classical mechanics, an old subject that is at the base of all of physics but encounters rapid development in recent years. Lagrangian mechanics and Hamiltonian mechanics are being used extensively in explaining classical mechanics concepts. With detailed derivations and explanations, this book series targets undergraduates and graduates in Physics and applied mathematics and provides focused guidance for their studies by repeatedly emphasizing how various topics are tied together by common physics principles.